13 May 2011

Two Mistakes in 12 May Quiz (2304)

Well, let's just start off with an apology: I was sloppy and as a result must alter the scores of 548 players for this day. Maybe it's because I was so excited at the end of last week when I found out that I will be a grandfather come November. No, that's a lousy excuse (though great news).

In any case, players wasted no time in reporting two problems with this quiz on the COUNT method:

1. We scored as incorrect a choice that resulted in an unhandled exception being raise. This error clearly indicates that the implement in that choice was flawed. The question, however, asked which choices resulted in "3" being displayed. When this choice is executed, "3" is displayed and then the error is raised. In most editing environments, you will see this output even when the block terminates with an exception.

Action taken: I changed the choice to include an exception handler that will display "ERROR" and changed the question text to ask for choices that only show "3". Anyone who marked that choice as correct has been given credit.

2. We did not include an ORDER BY on the query in the question, so the order of data placed in the collection cannot be guaranteed. THIS OMISSION REALLY IRRITATES ME - and should irritate you, too. Again, my apologies. This issue has been raised multiple times by players (for past quizzes) and I really need to be more careful.

Action taken: I added an ORDER BY to the query. Everyone who marked as incorrect the two intended-to-be-correct choices are given credit.

I also refreshed the rankings, so all data on the website should reflect the above steps.

1 comment:

  1. Hello Steven,
    Congratulations for the great news to you and your family !
    I already envy the upcoming baby for already
    receiving an Oracle-guru-grandy as a birth gift :) :) :).
    Maybe a sign for us, the "grandies generation",
    that we should free the stage for the coming one ?

    And thanks of course for the correction
    of the quiz, in the last days it looks like "core SQL" is playing a more prominent role in the challenge.

    Thanks & Best Regards,
    Iudith Mentzel

    ReplyDelete